Workforce Management Featured Article
Building a Stronger Contact Center with Robust Performance Management
Most contact centers engage in some kind of performance management system. Often, it comes in the form of using the center’s call recording solution to listen to a small sample of the agent’s calls, rating them according to some internal system, tallying and averaging these calls, and offering raises or promotions (or extra training to fill in some knowledge blanks).
While this is helpful in improving agent performance and identifying weak spots, in today’s multichannel contact center, it can’t be the sum of performance management. Agents spend a lot of their energy engaged in looking up data to answer customers’ questions and entering new information into multiple applications. They engage in active research, often use the company’s customer relationship management (CRM) system, interact with back-office operations and more. They may use e-mail, Web chat, social media and more. Simply put, performance management today can’t be just about how pleasant the agent is on the telephone.
When call recording software is combined with screen capture recording, call center managers can discover even more about how their center is achieving best practices, and can further improve the quality and consistency of customer relations, according to a recent blog post by Monet Software CEO Chuck Ciarlo.
“By capturing both synchronized voice and video of an agent’s customer interactions, managers can observe how agents are utilizing desktop applications, can reward outstanding performers, and create a library of successful customer encounters that can be used to train new agents and coach current staff on ways to improve their performance,” writes Ciarlo. “Once these changes are put in place, the business should see a positive impact on such KPIs as average handle time and first call resolution.”
It’s a better way to capture a complete picture of agent performance. And while agents are doing their best, so too should managers being doing theirs when it comes to evaluating agents. A thorough manager should be using a well-designed scorecard to rate agents and to boost the fairness of the performance management system, says Ciarlo.
“Rating agent performance with quality scorecards offers a number of benefits, from rewarding outstanding performers and identifying coaching needs to improving scheduling based on skills,” he writes. “Several scoring methods are available, one of the most common being the assignment of a grade for multiple parts of each call – greeting, call opening, vocal quality, courtesy, empathy, conflict resolution, etiquette and closing.”
By combining call recording and screen capture in agent performance management, and building the process of a solid foundation of a scorecard system, managers can do the best possible job in evaluating the contact center’s workforce. In doing so, they build a stronger contact center.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi